Unreal Engine exterior Night and Day Architectural Visualization

Hi friends, continuing experiments in Unreal Engine with more exterior and interior environment together. This time I tried to recreate this beautiful house exterior from project named
Wein House – Wein House / Besonias Almeida Arquitectos | ArchDaily. Still struggling with foliage to look realistic(Kite demo assets are so tempting).
In future will be incorporating some new trees and grass with my own materials for realistic looking foliage.

I am absolutely loving using Unreal Engine as my new Arch-Viz main tool. 3ds Max/Blender with Vray seems like a turtle when comparing to sheer features and speed of Unreal Engine, for instance exterior light built only took 10:02 minutes with 9 minutes for all night renders. When I compare it to my Vray render (Single 2K Image, Yes I did recreated this in Vray and 3ds Max also) which took whooping 7 hours, 10 minute seems like a breeze.

Let me know what you all think of adopting Unreal Engine for full-time Arch-Viz creation tool?

Hoping for better results soon.

@ - Thanks for the awesome trick to create realistic reflection on glass. Reply #40 in this thread - https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?74605-External-Archviz-Landscape-and-foliage-studies&highlight=
P.S – One thing I want desperately is Epic to remove 512×512 restriction on HDRI in game.(I heard there are some methods to get past it, but I am yet to wrap my head around it.)

Coming soon – Cinematic/Interactive Video with Interior shots.

I already had rendered the frames for this scene before posting so, the video is without any major changes. Will be redoing scene for exterior foliage very soon.

Unreal Engine Exterior Day-Time Architectural Visualization - YouTube Unreal Engine Day and Night Arch Vis Night - YouTube

Nice images. I’m starting a similar house project soon and since vegetation is tough to make, i’ll start with an overcast stormy winter atmosphere.
1 little complaint is the dirt/leaks are a bit strong imo. But I like the scene. Unreal is definitely more fun to use than vray heh!!!

Do you use a LUT? It could help a bit here to make the vegetation blend better with the rest of the scene. Maybe it’s colors are a tad too saturated! Because your vegetation seems of very good quality, is it speedtree or vray-type assets that you converted for unreal?

I am also wanting to convert from vray/corona to unreal…full time if possible. Whenever I go back to vray I get bored quick. I love the speed, the interactivity and the direct feedback of working real-time. + it allows me to do videos (something $$$$$ with vray), playable apps, vr apps eventually. Lots of possibilities. Hopefully clients are going to embrace the possibilities too!!! sometimes I miss the perfect G.I and reflections/refractions of offline renderer tho. hehe!

You’re on the right path very nice work.

My 2 cents. Everything is too cartoony especially the night shots, the saturation level in particular. I think if you refine your saturation and textures originally then use the post processing volume to good effect you can improve the over all realism.

Also–there’s some areas where grass shouldn’t be able to grow, like under the deck and by trees/rocks, etc.
Lighting looks very good

Lighting looks really good! Couple small things that stood out to me: the grime on the concrete feels a bit too much, I think taking it down by 2/3rds would help. Also, on the ramp I noticed the grime is rotated slightly when it should still be streaking straight down.

I definitely dig the overall look and feel of the images taken as a whole.

Beautiful. As a layperson I love UE4 ArchiViz… We’re talking all the glossy renderings we see in the brochures and videos but realtime, interactive etc.

As for the foliage, I would say, yes, do try the Kite demo assets and check out Koola’s foliage, I have no idea how he makes it look so good but it shows it’s possible!

Отличная работа, иди продавать на торговую площадь!

Thanks. In this particular scene I didn’t use any LUT…but generally I use LUTs. Will correct dirt/leaks soon, Now I think they are bit too large and strong. I too miss the ease of GI and Reflection/Refraction…we all do. :rolleyes:

I tried to use one or two Speedtree trees with other assets from kite demo. Kite demo tree material is really hard to control with such high reflection and specular values…will try to make my own foliage assets with better and simple material for full control.

I am trying hard to get the level where I don’t miss 3ds max/blender and Vray that much…wishing for the best…what Unreal Engine is doing in progress wise seems super promising for the time to come. There is so much to learn and adapt.

Will definitely try to improve the images in PS with better saturation control. Thanks

Thanks for pointing that…these little things make a huge difference. Will also try to improve the ground texture as it now seems low detail. Now a days I am learning so many different things and software that some time I totally overlook the end result or just simply avoid the details so not to loose my mind. Substance Design seems a very good choice here but the learning curve is bit intense I think after Using Unreal for five months, I am still a complete noob.:frowning:

Thanks for pointing out such intricate details and mistakes…I will try to change the grime soon with some high res texture and will make it small to look realistic.

Tried google translator which came out with - “Great job , go sell at the market square !”. Thanks for the kind words…but this scene require tons of improvement before it can become viable for me to ask money.:frowning:

Could you make a demo of this, so we could actually walk around and view this really good scene.

Basic Color Correction

I tried to reduce the saturation so as to avoid the cartoony look. Will be trying new foliage soon.

You can try a LUT, to kind of give a uniform look to your scene! But I like your new screen! Now if you tone down the leakings, you have a great scene man! good job!

You did the leaks with vertex painting?

I am glad that you liked it:o. Will be using LUTs soon. This was quick PS treatment for the time being, working on few interior shots now.

No I didn’t use vertex painting, as I have created this whole scene first in 3ds Max and Vray and then decided to recreate in Unreal, I had already applied the material there including leaks and all. It was created using VrayBlend Material in 3ds max and in Unreal I used three different channels to simulate this VrayBlend Material - Channel 0 for Concrete, Channel 1 for leaks (Which are multiplied with base concrete material - leaks are Black and White info only) and lastly Channel 3 for lightmass.

Is the sky an HDRI image? Are you using an HDRI for the scene lighting?

Yes, sky is HDRI and Used HDRI for scene lighting.

How did you set up your HDRI?

I’m trying to set up one as a skylight, the lighting is ok , I know about the resloution limitation, but how did you use it about a hires backplate?

Thanks

, add a very very subtle normal map (like wavy) to your glass normal and your reflections will look more real. No glass is 100% flat in the real world… and it will give the impression of movement. I’m pretty sure that’s what did in his scene cause you kinda see a little distortion in the windows :stuck_out_tongue: